


Guard Duty

by THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE



Category: The Shadow Campaigns - Django Wexler
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, Sibling Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 12:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16832509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE/pseuds/THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE
Summary: A rumination on fuzz and stitching.





	Guard Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted as a Tumblr commentary that got out of hand; archived here for posterity.

> Ellie’s room was a firetrap, thick with bed hangings, carpet, and velvet toys.

( _The Shadow Throne_ , after Marcus has been knocked out on top of the Vendre tower and is dreaming of the fire)

Okay, but… Winter has _never_ had anything like this? So, like, on her first birthday after she finds out that she and Marcus are siblings, does he, like… get her something? A stuffed toy of some kind? A little plush Girl’s Own soldier, or something? 

* * *

Because the shop that made her old toys doesn’t exist anymore and these things are all the rage among the children of the nobility and he got a really nice one done by a tailor in Northside and she always used to like playing with Marcus’ old toy soldiers and…

Winter accepts it, quietly. Marcus thinks she doesn’t like it, until he sees the tears glittering in her eyes. Because she has no real memories of life before Mrs. Wilmore’s, but holding the little velvet soldier, she can almost grasp some. They’re half-there, ghostly, but she can almost hear a woman’s voice, two gruff-yet-loving male ones. And to a girl who grew up at Mrs. Wilmore’s, even one grown to adulthood, the idea of having your own toy is something almost incomprehensible, a dream as distant and unreachable as becoming Queen of Vordan.

(Mrs. Wilmore Disapproved of her wards having their own possessions. Their husbands likely wouldn’t let them have any, so why did they need them now? Anyway, it was only like to breed wickedness in them)

She doesn’t know what to do with it at first, but she knows she does treasure it, because it’s _hers_ , and there’s been so little that really has been, and the few things she accumulated for herself ended up burned in Ashe-Katarion or smashed into the dust at Fort Valor. So it just sort of sits on her dresser, sitting sentry with its little stitched musket. 

Cyte finds it adorable, but she eventually realises there’s something deeper behind it:

Winter can’t sleep alone. Or rather, she can’t sleep _well_ alone. Whenever she does, she has nightmares. Of Jane, of the Beast, of fire and powder-smoke and a cave under the Great Desol. She needs someone there, to hold her as she drifts off, if she’s to sleep well. But Cyte can’t be there all the time. 

So she conscripts the little stuffed soldier to the cause. She sews a colonel’s eagles onto the shoulders, makes a little cap and adds shoulder-length black hair. When Winter comes back home, the little ranker is now a little colonel, made in the image of Cyte. There’s a little note with it:

_To guard your sleep when I’m not there_.

Winter laughs at first, and kisses Cyte through the laughter, but later, when Cyte’s gone for a week or month, she wakes in the middle of the night, stained with sweat, haunted by green eyes - sparkling, glowing, red-tinged, all three at once - she rolls out of bed and fetches the little plush Cyte. 

Against all adult rationality, it helps. It’s a little piece of fuzz, warmed by her body, and it’s not like having Cyte there with her. But it holds off the nightmares.

When Cyte comes home, her carriage arriving in the middle of the night, she lets herself into their home quietly. When she gets into the bedroom, Winter is lying curled up on the bed, clutching the toy to her heart.

She undresses, quietly, and slips into the bed, gently pries the toy away. Winter stirs, trying to keep hold of it. Cyte kisses her awake - or at least to a half-awake doze - and says:

“I’m not being replaced, am I?”

It works like that: Cyte and her little velvet counterpart guard Winter’s sleep and hold back the dreams, together.


End file.
